A BLENDING TECHNIQUE OF TOPOGRAHIC AND HYDROGRAPHIC DEMs FOR RIVER ALIGNMENT MODELLING

Abstract. Current practice in combining bathymetry and topographic DEM is based on overlaying and merging both datasets into a new DEM based on river boundary. Throughout a few sample of datasets from previous recent projects, authors realize that this method is not preserving the nature of natural river characteristic, especially at the slope in between riverbank and riverbed. Some arising issues were also highlighted; validity of the topographic DEM as well as the river boundary, limitations of DEMs and how bathymetry survey was carried out on field. To overcome these issues, a new technique called blending DEMs was proposed and tested to the project datasets. It is based on a fusion of two DEMs (with respective buffer, offset and fusion ratio from a validated river boundary) to produce riverbank slope and a merging of two different interpolation results to produce a best riverbed DEM. Simple riverbank ontology was prescribed to illustrate the model enhancement in accuracy and visualization provided by this technique. The output from three projects/DEM results was presented as a comparison study between the current practices with the proposed technique.